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Mizoguchi K, Sato M, Saito R, Koshikuni M, Sakakibara M, Manabe R, Harada Y, Uchikawa T, Ansai S, Kamei Y, Naruse K, Fukamachi S. Behavioral photosensitivity of multi-color-blind medaka: enhanced response under ultraviolet light in the absence of short-wavelength-sensitive opsins. BMC Neurosci 2023; 24:67. [PMID: 38097940 PMCID: PMC10722765 DOI: 10.1186/s12868-023-00835-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/09/2023] [Accepted: 11/20/2023] [Indexed: 12/17/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND The behavioral photosensitivity of animals could be quantified via the optomotor response (OMR), for example, and the luminous efficiency function (the range of visible light) should largely rely on the repertoire and expression of light-absorbing proteins in the retina, i.e., the opsins. In fact, the OMR under red light was suppressed in medaka lacking the red (long-wavelength sensitive [LWS]) opsin. RESULTS We investigated the ultraviolet (UV)- or blue-light sensitivity of medaka lacking the violet (short-wavelength sensitive 1 [SWS1]) and blue (SWS2) opsins. The sws1/sws2 double or sws1/sws2/lws triple mutants were as viable as the wild type. The remaining green (rhodopsin 2 [RH2]) or red opsins were not upregulated. Interestingly, the OMR of the double or triple mutants was equivalent or even increased under UV or blue light (λ = 350, 365, or 450 nm), which demonstrated that the rotating stripes (i.e., changes in luminance) could fully be recognized under UV light using RH2 alone. The OMR test using dichromatic stripes projected onto an RGB display consistently showed that the presence or absence of SWS1 and SWS2 did not affect the equiluminant conditions. CONCLUSIONS RH2 and LWS, but not SWS1 and SWS2, should predominantly contribute to the postreceptoral processes leading to the OMR or, possibly, to luminance detection in general, as the medium-wavelength-sensitive and LWS cones, but not the SWS cones, are responsible for luminance detection in humans.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kiyono Mizoguchi
- Laboratory of Evolutionary Genetics, Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences, Japan Women's University, Mejirodai 2-8-1, Bunkyo-Ku, Tokyo, 112-8681, Japan
| | - Mayu Sato
- Laboratory of Evolutionary Genetics, Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences, Japan Women's University, Mejirodai 2-8-1, Bunkyo-Ku, Tokyo, 112-8681, Japan
| | - Rina Saito
- Laboratory of Evolutionary Genetics, Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences, Japan Women's University, Mejirodai 2-8-1, Bunkyo-Ku, Tokyo, 112-8681, Japan
| | - Mayu Koshikuni
- Laboratory of Evolutionary Genetics, Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences, Japan Women's University, Mejirodai 2-8-1, Bunkyo-Ku, Tokyo, 112-8681, Japan
| | - Mana Sakakibara
- Laboratory of Evolutionary Genetics, Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences, Japan Women's University, Mejirodai 2-8-1, Bunkyo-Ku, Tokyo, 112-8681, Japan
| | - Ran Manabe
- Laboratory of Evolutionary Genetics, Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences, Japan Women's University, Mejirodai 2-8-1, Bunkyo-Ku, Tokyo, 112-8681, Japan
| | - Yumi Harada
- Laboratory of Evolutionary Genetics, Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences, Japan Women's University, Mejirodai 2-8-1, Bunkyo-Ku, Tokyo, 112-8681, Japan
| | - Tamaki Uchikawa
- Laboratory of Evolutionary Genetics, Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences, Japan Women's University, Mejirodai 2-8-1, Bunkyo-Ku, Tokyo, 112-8681, Japan
| | - Satoshi Ansai
- Laboratory of Bioresources, National Institute for Basic Biology, Aichi, 444-8585, Japan
- Graduate School of Life Sciences, Tohoku University, Miyagi, 980-8577, Japan
- Laboratory of Genome Editing Breeding, Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University, Kyoto, 606-8507, Japan
| | - Yasuhiro Kamei
- Spectrography and Bioimaging Facility, National Institute for Basic Biology, Aichi, 444-8585, Japan
- Department of Basic Biology, School of Life Science, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI), Aichi, 444-8585, Japan
| | - Kiyoshi Naruse
- Laboratory of Bioresources, National Institute for Basic Biology, Aichi, 444-8585, Japan
- Department of Basic Biology, School of Life Science, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI), Aichi, 444-8585, Japan
| | - Shoji Fukamachi
- Laboratory of Evolutionary Genetics, Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences, Japan Women's University, Mejirodai 2-8-1, Bunkyo-Ku, Tokyo, 112-8681, Japan.
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Kaneko E, Sato H, Fukamachi S. Validation of the three-chamber strategy for studying mate choice in medaka. PLoS One 2021; 16:e0259741. [PMID: 34780539 PMCID: PMC8592428 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0259741] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/11/2021] [Accepted: 10/25/2021] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
The three-chamber experiment, in which one test animal can choose between two animals placed in physically inaccessible compartments, is a widely adopted strategy for studying sexual preference in animals. Medaka, a small freshwater teleost, is an emerging model for dissecting the neurological/physiological mechanisms underlying mate choice for which intriguing findings have been accumulating. The three-chamber strategy has rarely been adopted in this species; therefore, here we investigated its validity using medaka colour variants that mate assortatively. First, a total of 551 movies, in which a test male and two choice females interacted for 30 min under a free-swimming condition, were manually analysed. The sexual preference of the males, calculated as a courtship ratio, was highly consistent between human observers (r > 0.96), supporting the objectivity of this manual-counting strategy. Second, we tested two types of three-chamber apparatuses, in which choice fish were presented in either a face-to-face or side-by-side location. Test fish (regardless of sex) spent most of the time associating with choice fish in the compartments. However, their sexual preference, calculated as an association ratio, was poorly reproduced when the locations of the choice fish were swapped. Third, the sexual preferences of males quantified using the manual-counting and either of the three-chamber strategies did not correlate (r = 0.147 or 0.297). Hence, we concluded that, even for individuals of a species like medaka, which spawn every day, sexual preference could not be reliably evaluated using the three-chamber strategy. Optimization of the protocol may solve this problem; however, the explanation for the observation that animals that are ready for spawning persist with never-accessible mating partners must be reconsidered.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ena Kaneko
- Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences, Laboratory of Evolutionary Genetics, Japan Women’s University, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan
| | - Hinako Sato
- Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences, Laboratory of Evolutionary Genetics, Japan Women’s University, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan
| | - Shoji Fukamachi
- Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences, Laboratory of Evolutionary Genetics, Japan Women’s University, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan
- * E-mail:
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Yamashita J, Nishiike Y, Fleming T, Kayo D, Okubo K. Estrogen mediates sex differences in preoptic neuropeptide and pituitary hormone production in medaka. Commun Biol 2021; 4:948. [PMID: 34373576 PMCID: PMC8352984 DOI: 10.1038/s42003-021-02476-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/29/2021] [Accepted: 07/22/2021] [Indexed: 11/21/2022] Open
Abstract
The preoptic area (POA) is one of the most evolutionarily conserved regions of the vertebrate brain and contains subsets of neuropeptide-expressing neurons. Here we found in the teleost medaka that two neuropeptides belonging to the secretin family, pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (Pacap) and vasoactive intestinal peptide (Vip), exhibit opposite patterns of sexually dimorphic expression in the same population of POA neurons that project to the anterior pituitary: Pacap is male-biased, whereas Vip is female-biased. Estrogen secreted by the ovary in adulthood was found to attenuate Pacap expression and, conversely, stimulate Vip expression in the female POA, thereby establishing and maintaining their opposite sexual dimorphism. Pituitary organ culture experiments demonstrated that both Pacap and Vip can markedly alter the expression of various anterior pituitary hormones. Collectively, these findings show that males and females use alternative preoptic neuropeptides to regulate anterior pituitary hormones as a result of their different estrogen milieu.
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Affiliation(s)
- Junpei Yamashita
- Department of Aquatic Bioscience, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan
| | - Yuji Nishiike
- Department of Aquatic Bioscience, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan
| | - Thomas Fleming
- Department of Aquatic Bioscience, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan
| | - Daichi Kayo
- Department of Aquatic Bioscience, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan
| | - Kataaki Okubo
- Department of Aquatic Bioscience, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan.
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Kanazawa N, Goto M, Harada Y, Takimoto C, Sasaki Y, Uchikawa T, Kamei Y, Matsuo M, Fukamachi S. Changes in a Cone Opsin Repertoire Affect Color-Dependent Social Behavior in Medaka but Not Behavioral Photosensitivity. Front Genet 2020; 11:801. [PMID: 32903371 PMCID: PMC7434946 DOI: 10.3389/fgene.2020.00801] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/11/2020] [Accepted: 07/06/2020] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Common ancestors of vertebrates had four types of cone opsins: short-wavelength sensitive 1 (SWS1), SWS2, rhodopsin 2 (RH2), and long-wavelength sensitive (LWS) types. Whereas fish and birds retain all the types, mammals have lost two of them (SWS2 and RH2) possibly because of their nocturnal lifestyle during the Mesozoic Era. Considering that the loss of cone opsin types causes so-called color blindness in humans (e.g., protanopia), the ability to discriminate color by trichromatic humans could be lower than that in potentially tetrachromatic birds and fish. Behavioral studies using color-blind (cone opsin-knockout) animals would be helpful to address such questions, but it is only recently that the genome-editing technologies have opened up this pathway. Using medaka as a model, we introduced frameshift mutations in SWS2 (SWS2a and/or SWS2b) after detailed characterization of the loci in silico, which unveiled the existence of a GC-AG intron and non-optic expressed-sequence-tags (ESTs) that include SWS2a in part. Transcripts from the mutated SWS2 loci are commonly reduced, suggesting that the SWS2a/b-double mutants could produce, if any, severely truncated (likely dysfunctional) SWS2s in small amounts. The mutants exhibited weakened body color preferences during mate choice. However, the optomotor response (OMR) test under monochromatic light revealed that the mutants had no defect in spectral sensitivity, even at the absorbance maxima (λmax) of SWS2s. Evolutionary diversification of cone opsins has often been discussed in relation to adaptation to dominating light in habitats (i.e., changes in the repertoire or λmax are for increasing sensitivity to the dominating light). However, the present results seem to provide empirical evidence showing that acquiring or losing a type of cone opsin (or changes in λmax) need not substantially affect photopic or mesopic sensitivity. Other points of view, such as color discrimination of species-specific mates/preys/predators against habitat-specific backgrounds, may be necessary to understand why cone opsin repertories are so various among animals.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nodoka Kanazawa
- Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences, Japan Women's University, Bunkyō, Japan
| | - Mayuko Goto
- Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences, Japan Women's University, Bunkyō, Japan
| | - Yumi Harada
- Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences, Japan Women's University, Bunkyō, Japan
| | - Chiaki Takimoto
- Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences, Japan Women's University, Bunkyō, Japan
| | - Yuuka Sasaki
- Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences, Japan Women's University, Bunkyō, Japan
| | - Tamaki Uchikawa
- Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences, Japan Women's University, Bunkyō, Japan.,National Institute for Basic Biology, Okazaki, Japan
| | - Yasuhiro Kamei
- National Institute for Basic Biology, Okazaki, Japan.,School of Life Sciences, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI), Okazaki, Japan
| | - Megumi Matsuo
- Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences, Japan Women's University, Bunkyō, Japan
| | - Shoji Fukamachi
- Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences, Japan Women's University, Bunkyō, Japan
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Evolutionary history of the medaka long-wavelength sensitive genes and effects of artificial regression by gene loss on behavioural photosensitivity. Sci Rep 2019; 9:2726. [PMID: 30804415 PMCID: PMC6389941 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-39978-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/11/2018] [Accepted: 11/28/2018] [Indexed: 01/28/2023] Open
Abstract
Tandem gene duplication has led to an expansion of cone-opsin repertoires in many fish, but the resulting functional advantages have only been conjectured without empirical demonstration. Medaka (Oryzias latipes and O. sakaizumii) have eight (two red, three green, two blue, and one violet) cone opsin genes. Absorbance maxima (λmax) of the proteins vary from 356 nm to 562 nm, but those of the red opsins (long-wavelength sensitive; LWS) are nearly identical, obscuring the necessity of their coexistence. Here, we compared the LWSa and LWSb loci of these sister species and found that the gene duplication occurred long before the latipes–sakaizumii speciation (4–18 million years ago), and the high sequence similarity between the paralogues is the result of at least two events of gene conversion. These repetitive gene conversions would indicate the importance for medaka of retaining two identical LWSs in the genome. However, a newly established medaka mutant with a single LWS showed no defect in LWS expression or behavioural red-light sensitivity, demonstrating functional redundancy of the paralogs. Thus, as with many other genes after whole-genome duplication, the redundant LWS might be on the way to being lost from the current cone opsin repertoire. Thus, non-allelic gene conversion may temporarily provide an easier and more frequent solution than gene loss for reducing genetic diversity, which should be considered when assessing history of gene evolution by phylogenetic analyses.
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Loss of red opsin genes relaxes sexual isolation between skin-colour variants of medaka. Behav Processes 2018; 150:25-28. [PMID: 29447852 DOI: 10.1016/j.beproc.2018.02.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 12] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/01/2017] [Revised: 02/08/2018] [Accepted: 02/09/2018] [Indexed: 12/19/2022]
Abstract
Colour vision is often essential for animals. Fine discrimination of colours enhances the ability of animals to find food, predators, or mating partners. Using two colour variants of medaka (Oryzias latipes), which mate assortatively depending on visual cues (pale grey versus dark orange), we recently established red colour-blind strains by knocking out the red opsin (long-wavelength-sensitive) genes and elucidated that the fish were indeed insensitive to red light. In the present study, we investigated the mate choice of these red-blind fish. The colour variants with normal colour vision strongly preferred to mate with their own strain. The red-blind ones also preferred their own strain; i.e. they still mated assortatively. However, their preference was significantly weaker than that of fish with normal colour vision. In other words, the red-blind fish showed increased sexual interest in the other colour variant. These results indicated that reduced sensitivity to red light also reduced their ability to discriminate colours. This empirical evidence directly demonstrates that a change in cone-opsin repertoire changes mating decision behaviours, which would affect gene flow and speciation processes between conspecific colour variants in nature, as suggested in other studies.
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